The Wall Street Journal’s iPad App Revenues So Far: $2.4 Million

The Wall Street Journal charged 6 advertisers $400,000 to get in on its iPad app launch, according to an internal memo sent to Dow Jones employees.

Quick math: The WSJ’s iPad revenues so far are $2.4 million.The memo is a good read on how the WSJ, and other media companies, are approaching the iPad and apps.

If you want to read the whole note click here.Otherwise, here are the key details:

• The WSJ sold $400,000 packages that in included 2 ad pages in the paper, and $100,000 in online ads.
• It signed on 6 advertisers at launch. It took less than a week to sign them up, and the WSJ could have had more advertisers.
• Apple was only giving WSJ stats on downloads initially. WSJ didn’t know how people were using the app/how many impressions it was doing until last week.
• WSJ is trying telling advertisers to forget impressions anyway, this is a “high impact branding” experience. Since this is the WSJ, there’s a shot at the New York Times, which “didn’t take advantage of the early opportunity of the iPad and ads.”
• The issue of Flash is overblown. Nobody seemed to miss it, or care.
• The WSJ will expand to 10 advertisers in the fall, and expects more and more ad dollars to flow to the iPad app. It’s telling advertisers to focus on the overall audience — free and paid — and ignore the subscription only numbers.

via The Wall Street Journal’s iPad App Revenues So Far: $2.4 Million.

CHART OF THE DAY: iPad Is On Track To Be The Fastest Selling Mobile Device Ever

When the iPad first hit the market, we asked “How will the iPad sell compared to other mobile gadgets?” We now have our answer.After less than 80 days on the market, Apple has sold 3 million iPads and according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, it’s on track to be the fastest selling mobile device in history.Assuming an average selling price of $650 per iPad, Apple just generated $2 billion in sales. That’s better than iPod sales from the March quarter, which according to Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty only totaled $1.5 billion.

via CHART OF THE DAY: iPad Is On Track To Be The Fastest Selling Mobile Device Ever.

Google Wants to Save Newspapers

Google isn’t killing newspapers, says The Atlantic’s James Fallows. In fact, it’s trying to save them.

I’m with Fallows on the first point. Not convinced at all about the second one, but Fallows is, and he spends many pages explaining Google’s reasoning and plans.

Short version: Google thinks newspapers are good for Google, because they generate information people want to search for. And when newspapers stop printing actual newspapers and start selling online ads for as much money as print ads, everything should work out fine.

In the longer version, Fallows walks readers through the basics of the newspaper crisis (disappearing classifieds, disappearing display ads, disappearing subscribers). And he touches on some tinkering Google (GOOG) is doing that might be useful for publishers and news organizations (Living Stories, Fast Flip, YouTube Direct, help build pay walls).

That stuff won’t matter, though, unless newspapers can cut a lot of costs and make a lot more money from online ads.

Part of the cost-cutting is kind of easy, because it will happen whether papers like it or not. Their print product will eventually wither away, and they’ll save a lot of money on paper, ink, delivery trucks, etc. And part of Google’s growth strategy hinges on more money flowing into online display ads. If Google is right, some of those dollars will flow to publishers, so that’s good.

But assuming that online ads will be as valuable, per eyeball, as offline ads have been is a very big leap of faith. And unless they’re close, there’s no way a news organization can have anything like the workforce it employs now–even if the entire operation is digital.

This line of thought leads us to a dark place that we’ll probably be visiting anyway, so let’s not leave on that note. Let’s try Fallows’s tempered optimism instead and hope he’s right and I’m wrong:

The problem Google is aware of involves the disruption still ahead. Ten years from now, a robust and better-funded news business will be thriving. What next year means is harder to say….If the prospect is continued transition rather than mass extinction of news organizations, that is better than many had assumed. It requires an openness to the constant experimentation that Google preaches and that is journalism’s real heritage.

via James Fallows: Google Wants to Save Newspapers | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.

Internet Is Set to Overtake Newspapers in Ad Revenue

The Internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second-largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2010 to 2014.

The online ad business, excluding mobile ads, is set to expand to $34.4 billion in 2014 from $24.2 billion in 2009, according to the report, which PwC plans to release Tuesday.

Newspapers, meanwhile, continue to suffer from a decline in advertising revenue. According to numbers released by the Newspaper Association of America earlier this year, print advertising revenue dropped 28.6 percent in 2009 to $24.82 billion. The PwC report estimates that print advertising in newspapers will hit $22.3 billion by 2014.

“Although the Internet did not fully escape the impact of the recession, its decline in the United States was much less severe than that of other advertising media,” the PwC report notes.

Shifts in consumer behavior, potential for inventory on the Internet, and increased broadband penetration in the U.S. are key factors in PwC’s projections, according to David Silverman, a partner at PwC.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

via Internet Is Set to Overtake Newspapers in Ad Revenue | Lauren Goode | Voices | AllThingsD.

IPad’s Early Adopters Are Gazing at the Ads — for Now

Gannett-owned ad technology company Pointroll has placed four iPad campaigns so far, including ads for Ford, Unilever, Marriott and Target within the iPad edition of USA Today, part of its parent company, and the communications app TextPlus. Pointroll says interaction times for ads on the iPad are averaging about 30 seconds. Click-through rates have been between 0.9% and 1.5%, six times the benchmark for click-to-expand ads on the web.

via IPad’s Early Adopters Are Gazing at the Ads — for Now – Advertising Age – Digital.

Publishers see signs the iPad can restore ad money – Yahoo! News

NEW YORK – Good news for the news business: Companies are paying newspapers and magazines up to five times as much to place ads in their iPad applications as what similar advertising costs on regular websites.

This doesn’t mean Apple’s tablet computer will live up to its hype as a potential lifeline for the media industry. Online ads still generate a small fraction of news companies’ advertising revenue, and it’s an open question whether print ads will return to what they totaled before the recession.

But early evidence suggests the iPad is at least offering publishers a way to get more money out of advertisers. That bolsters the hope that portable touch-screen computers could start turning the economics of digital advertising in publishers’ favor.”

I think it will redefine publishing and also redefine how advertisers connect with our audience,” said Lou Cona, executive vice president at Conde Nast Media Group, the privately held publisher of such magazines as Vogue, GQ and Wired.

via Publishers see signs the iPad can restore ad money – Yahoo! News.